The Mechanical Man: James Broadus Watson By: Zach Herfel The Birth - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Mechanical Man:

James Broadus Watson

By: Zach Herfel

The Birth of J.B. Watson

• James Broadus Watson was born on January 9th,

1878 near Greenville, South Carolina

• Watson was the fourth child out of six
• Parents:
• Pickens Butler Watson
• Emma Watson

Pickens Butler Watson

• Descended from independent landowners who

settled the back country of South Carolina

• Picken’s father gave each of his 10 children a parcel of land
• Ran away at age 16 to join the Confederate Army
• Married Emma Roe
• Banished from family and shunned by neighbors
• Pickens attempted to run a sawmill away from

home

• Pickens worked during the week and then ate,

slept, and drank whiskey on the weekends

Emma Watson

• Emma Watson was left to raise the children
• Devout Baptist
• Emma singled out J.B Watson out of all the other

children for a special destiny

• Watson was named after John Albert Broadus

Schooling

• Watson began school at age 6 at a one-room

district school

• Attended a private academy at age 8
• Emma Watson realized that her expectations of her

children were limited due to the small farming community

• In 1890, Emma Watson sold the farm

Greenville

• Emma Watson moved the family to Greenville
• Rapidly growing city
• In transition from agricultural community to industrial center
• Between 1870 and 1880, the population doubled
• During this time, Watson recalls “few pleasant

memories from these years.”

Adolescent Years

• Watson was enrolled in 7th grade when he was 12

years old

• Described himself as lazy, somewhat insubordinate

and never made a passing grade

• Watson was bullied and often the center of

classroom jokes

• Took anger out by fighting with Blacks

Watson’s View of Religion

• Still remained a member of his mother church until

his college years

• Join the First Baptist Church
• Grew to dislike all religions
• Upward mobile professionals during this time:
• Grew up in rural areas and attended church
• Embraced faith in material progress and believed mankind would be

saved by achievements in technology and science

Furman University

• Schools in Greenville were an improvement but still

lacked opportunity

• Watson, age 16, enrolled as a sub-freshman at Furman

University

• Attended Furman for 5 years
• Worked as a assistant in the chemistry lab
• Watson did not stand out in college
• Watson credits Gordon B. Moore’s classes for drawing

him to psychology

• An extra year at Furman
• Decides to pursue Doctorate in Psychology and

Philosophy

• Watson graduated with his Master of Arts degree in 1899

Post-Furman

• Moved away from home in 1899
• Principal at Batesburg Institute near Columbia
• Emma Watson became ill and never recovered
• Watson’s last tie to South Carolina was gone
• Letter to William Rainey Harper, the president of the

University of Chicago

• Watson left for Chicago in the fall of 1900
• At this time psychology was one of the most

promising professions

• Only recognized for 8 years

The New Psychology

• The last quarter in the 19th century focused on the self-

conscious

• G. Stanley Hall hoped to legitimize psychology
• Hall was one of the first to learn experimental psychology and

methodology

• The “New Psychology” referred to an empirical approach to

psychological investigation

• Hall introduced psychology into the academic world through

pedagogy

• Established the first psychology lab in America and founded

the American Journal of Psychology in 1886

• Psychology took off during the 1890’s
• Hall claimed that psychology could be used in the classroom
• Psychologists still disagreed on “science”

University of Chicago

• Unsettled about his profession
• Experimental Psychology
• Philosophy
• Neurology
• Interest in animal or comparative psychology
• Watson did not enjoy working with human subjects
• Dissertation: Relationship between behavior in the

white lab rat and the growth of its nervous system

• Animal psychology had its critics

University of Chicago

• Watson worked day and night on his experiments
• Watson had a breakdown one year before his

doctoral work was completed

• In 1903, Watson obtained his Ph. D in Psychology

Beginning of Watson’s Career

• Applied for assistantship at Carnegie Institute
• Dewey and Angell encouraged Watson he stay in

Chicago

• Fall of 1903 Watson gets instructorship
• Watson pushed for a separate psychology program
• Dewey left to teach at Columbia
• Angell joined the administration at the university
• Angell backed Watson’s research
• Watson’s speech at the Louisiana Purchase

Exposition

• The new generation of psychologists

Watson’s Relationships

• Watson was interested in young, impressionable

women who were initially awed by him

• Vida Sutton
• Watson became involved with Mary Ickes
• Similar childhood to Watson
• Watson and Harold Ickes despised each other
• Secretly wed on December 16, 1903
• Mary left college
• Affair with Vida Sutton
• Watson and Mary were publicly wed in the fall of

1904

Baltimore

• Applied for a grant at Carnegie Institute
• Leave of absence
• Watson and Mary moved to Baltimore
• Mary was pregnant with their first-born
• Watson was unemployed

Back to Chicago

• Watson moved back to Chicago
• Threw himself into his work
• Regular teaching
• Lab duties
• Edited edition of the Psychological Bulletin
• Organized western branch meeting for the APA
• Watson’s reputation grew from experimental work

and as an organizer and administrator

Controversy

• Watson experimented with rats to compare

whether normal rats responded differently than those who had senses systematically removed

• Criticism: cruel and unjustifiable
• Watson responded that criticism had no

significance

• The mind is an adaptive organ
• Study the mind of animals and humans
• Studied seagulls in the summer of 1907 in the Florida

Keys

Fatherhood

• Watson returned to Chicago in time for the birth of

his son

• Watson was not bothered by crying
• Watson’s temperament as a father not very warm
• His daughter Mary was favored

Watson’s 1st Affair

• Vida Sutton returned to Chicago
• Watson and Sutton met regularly
• Mary’s brother, Harold Ickes, hired a private

investigator

• During the time Harold was having an affair

Johns Hopkins University

• 1908: Watson is open to offers from other universities
• In March Watson accepted an offer from Johns

Hopkins

• Doubled his salary
• Watson “tasted freedom” at Johns Hopkins and

plunged into his work

James Mark Baldwin

• Baldwin was hired to create a philosophy and

psychology program at Johns Hopkins

• Involved with publishing of:
• Psychological Review
• Psychological Index
• Psychological Monographs
• Psychological Bulletin
• Baldwin was caught at a brothel

Watson’s Golden Opportunity

• Watson took advantage of Baldwin’s incident
• Received responsibility for the psychology program
• Became editor of the Psychological Bulletin
• Watson still pushed for separate program
• Competing universities had programs
• Psychologists still struggled for acceptance in the scientific community

Watson’s Responsibilities

• Watson and Robert Yerks published the Journal of

Animal Behavior in 1910

• Watson continued to take on more work only to

complain

• Departmental duties
• Teaching
• Conducting his own research
• Planning for the psychological congress
• Editing the Journal of Animal Behavior
• Co-editing the Psychological Bulletin

Back to Florida

• Watson traveled back to Florida to study migrating

and nesting habits of a species of terns

• The question: to what extent are fixed modes of

responding inherited, and to what extent are

• rganisms equipped with “plastic forms of activity”

that require shaping by training or instruction?

Mainstream Psychology

• Watson was dissatisfied with mainstream

psychology because of introspection

• The solution: define behavior as a biological

problem well ignoring the conscious

The Modern Era

• Series of lectures at Columbia
• “Psychology as a behaviorist views it”
• Claimed to be a behaviorist
• Critic of current psychology
• Separate approach
• The goal of psychology should be to predict and

control behavior

• Watson believed the new behavioral psychology

could be written in terms of:

• Habit formation
• Stimulus response
• Habit integrations

Behaviorism

• Behaviorism was presented by Watson in 1913
• Met requirements as a science
• In 1914, Watson published An Introduction to

Comparative Psychology

• At age 36, Watson became the president of the

APA

• Youngest nominee

Criticism of Behaviorism

• Dewey criticized that behaviorists ignore the social

qualities of behavior

• E. B. Titchener stated that science was being

exchanged with technology

• Industrial era
• Defenses against criticism
• Any nonpositivistic position was unverifiable and therefore unscientific
• Positivism had no central doctrine that could be scientifically challenged

Conditioned Reflex

• Watson began to research conditioned reflexes
• Solution to introspection
• A method of gathering data and a tool to modify behavior
• Watson became interested reliable and objective

methods of studying and treating mental disorders

Emotional Responses

• Watson desired a behavioral theory of emotional

response

• Similar conditions used by Pavlov
• Watson researched reflexes and instincts in infants
• Received 40 babies a month
• In 1916 Watson claimed to have found the key to

emotional development

• Fear
• Rage
• Love

Vocational Psychology

• The idea of using applied psychology for hiring and

promoting employees had been introduced

• Watson stated there was a lack of efficiency in

selecting employees

• Watson suggested performance tests

World War I

• WWI was seen as an opportunity to advance

democracy and begin social reconstruction at home

• Watson wanted to mobilize psychology
• Use of psychology tests to select and classify military

personnel

• Woodrow Wilson created the National Research

Council (NRC)

• Included all branches in science and engineering

Watson’s Role in WWI

• Watson was made major in the Signal Corps
• Methods to select and train aviators
• Conducted research with homing pigeons on bases

in Louisiana and Texas

• The wireless radio halted the research
• Watson also administered a questionnaire to British

aviators

• Watson was almost court-martialed
• Discharged in 1918

Return to John Hopkins

• Watson published a new textbook: Psychology from

the Standpoint of a Behaviorist

• Watson defined psychology as human activity and

conduct

• Psychology should be able to:
• Predict human activity with reasonably certainty
• “Formulate laws and principles whereby a man’s actions can be

controlled by organized society”

Applied Psychology After WWI

• Watson received a grant from the United States

Social Hygiene Board for researching education on venereal disease

• Also research effects of alcohol consumption
• Interested in creating a psychology role in

education, social work, and mental health agencies

Emotional Development

• Watson believed that parents determined their

child’s emotional development

• Experimental nursery and infant labs in regards to

public school

• Parents could be guided and warned about the way children were

tending to develop

• Teachers would be trained as well
• School psychologists take over early grades
• Watson argued that most biological and

psychological problems are centered around processes of development

Little Albert

• Emotional reactions are due to environmental

causes which create habit formation

• Watson claimed an emotional reaction could be

conditioned to respond to a chosen stimulus

• The results were widely accepted
• Watson made no attempt to recondition Little

Albert

• Phobia of fur coats
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI

Discussion Questions

• Was Watson’s experiment on Little Albert ethical?
• Is there another way that Watson could have tested

his emotional reaction hypothesis on humans?

• How do you feel about experimental nurseries?

Watson’s 2nd Affair

• Watson’s assistant for the Little Albert experiment

was Rosalie Rayner

• Watson was 42 when Rosalie came to study at

Johns Hopkins

• In 1920, Watson and Mary break up after 10 years of

“drifting”

Rosalie Rayner

• Rosalie’s family occupied a prominent place in the

economic and political life in Maryland

• Grandfather established the family fortune in railroads, mining, and

shipbuilding

• Rosalie’s uncle served on the United States Senate

Proceedings to Divorce

• Watson insisted that Mary and the kids go to

Switzerland for a year until the divorce is final

• Mary made Watson pay
• Mary stole letters written by Watson to Rosalie
• Used as leverage
• Mary got custody of the children, substantial

property, and alimony settlement

The End of Watson’s Career

• Watson did not conceal the relationship
• Watson was asked to resign from Johns Hopkins
• In October 1920, Watson left Johns Hopkins
• Nationwide publicity erupted after the divorce suit

went to trial

• No university wanted to risk the publicity by hiring

Watson

A New Career

• William I. Thomas arranged an interview at J. Walter

Thompson advertising company for Watson

• Also introduced Watson to friends at New School for

Social Research

• Watson was offered a job
• Watson was inclined to apply for the advertising

position

Watson, Rosalie, and Mary

• The divorce was final between Watson and Mary on

December 24, 1920

• Watson and Rosalie were married on New Year’s

Eve

• Watson began his new career as an executive in

the Thompson agency

Advertising Research

• “The whole object of research is to keep everyone

remarkably dissatisfied with what he has in order to keep the factory busy making new things”

• After 1910, advertisers relied less on appeals of

reason and more on indirect forms of persuasion

Advertising

• “After all, it is the emotional factor in our lives that

touches off and activates our social behavior whether it is buying a cannon, a sword or a plowshare- and love, fear and rage are the same Italy, Abyssinia and Canada.”

• Used emotional responses to sell products
• Baby powder ad
• Watson used testimonials
• Watson sold sex appeal
• In 1924 Watson was made vice-president of the

Thompson agency

Discussion Questions

• Should psychology play such a large role in

advertising?

• Do you think advertising would have ended up

using sex to sell items if Watson had not entered into the “psychology of appeal”?

Watson’s Other Work

• From 1922 to 1926, Watson gave weekly lectures at

The New School

• Watson wrote The Psychological Care of Infant and

Child

• Believed that mothers begin to destroy the child the moment it is born
• Dedicated to the first mother who raises a happy child
• Treat the child as an adult
• “All of the weaknesses, reserves, fears, cautions, and inferiorities of our

parents are stamped into us with sledge hammer blows.

Behaviorist’s Utopia

• Women were unfit for the workplace
• Women would be taught “domestic science”
• Watson’s dream where science became religion

Additional

• Rosalie died from pneumonia in 1935
• Kids were sent to camp that night
• Watson worked left the J. Walter Thompson

Company in 1935

• An advertising executive at the William Esty

Company until 1945

• Watson passed peacefully at age 80 on September

24, 1958